I can’t believe there’s less than a month left of classes! Graduation is literally right around the corner. In just 2 weeks, Abby and I will be traveling to Costa Rica one last time to, hopefully, help Invenio build the first cuartito based on our redesign. Before our trip, there’s plenty to get done to ensure that we can meet our goals for the project before the end of the semester. Ideally, we would like to be ready to begin the clinical trials over the summer, but there’s a lot to be done to get us to that state, some of which is out of our hands. In these next few weeks we plan on organizing materials such as a training guide and cleaning guide that would also be used during the clinical trial.
Working in these sprints has also given me the chance to work a lot on Stent-X, which I appreciate because the nature of the two projects is so different! We just had our second animal study last Thursday, where we had the chance to test out our indicator prototype. Over spring break, Abby and Tasha adapted a catheter to use a magnet to complete the circuit and light up an LED when the stent magnet and the catheter magnet made contact. It was exciting to see this design work, and we’ll work to iterate on the design in the next sprint. 
With regards to career plans, I recently had a call with the other people who will be starting the Technical Development Program at Baxter with me in June. It was exciting to hear about the types of opportunities that will be available to me when I start, and definitely gave me a lot to consider an think about for my first rotation! Finally, Karlee and I have continued to volunteer walking dogs at Houston Pets Alive, a no-kill animal shelter in the area. I hope to continue such volunteer work once I graduate, as it’s been so rewarding just walking these dogs for a few minutes! Time is definitely flying by way too fast- how is it almost April?!